Meanwhile, early voting participation decreased in the parliamentary districts maintained by the Republicans, probably leaving the GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue with a bigger deficit on Election Day than necessary to make up for on November 3, with early voting ending this week before New Year’s holiday.
Both parties have been closely monitoring the face-to-face and absent ballots that have already been sent, looking for data on the state of the races after the extremely heated disputes in November and with less than a week to adjust the final result. voting and advertising strategies for next Tuesday’s vote.
While early voting numbers provide Democrats with some comfort, they are hardly predictive: Republican officials have always predicted the need to outperform on Election Day compared to Democrats. GOP voters have long preferred voting in person and on election day, but the party differences in voting became even more acute after President Donald Trump spent much of the year criticizing the vote by mail and attacking the government in the November elections in Georgia.
At the very least, however, the strong Democratic performance so far puts extra pressure on Republicans to perform on election day. The two Republican senators are counting on Trump to increase voter turnout next week: The president is holding his final election cycle rally on Monday night in one of the most republican corners of the state, an effort to get his supporters to the polls in an area where they need to win by large margins.
Karl Rove, the operative Republican Party veteran who heads the joint fundraising committee between Loeffler, Perdue and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote in a memo this week that the votes cast so far favor Democrats more than in November, according to a copy of the memo obtained by POLITICO.
“Although the combined total number of votes cast so far by absentee mail and early voting in person is some points more democratic than in the fall, this will likely be the result of early voting in the second round being reduced by two days,” wrote Rove in memorandum, referring to the fact that early voting places were closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. “We expect the GOP numbers to continue to rise this week and forecasts show good weather for the run-off day, January 5th.”
“President Trump’s visit to Dalton for a rally on Monday night, January 4, should help boost the Republican Party’s participation that Tuesday in style,” added Rove.
For Democrats, the mere fact that turnout is so high is already positive. The party has been fighting systematically in the second round in Georgia, thanks to the large dropout of Democratic voters who stayed home after November, a trend that does not seem to have continued this year.
It is impossible to draw decisive conclusions from early voting numbers, and the agents who track the trends warn against the January 5 results forecast based on the vote so far. But trends point to high turnout and a tight election for Democrats, even in a state where his Senate candidates underperformed Joe Biden. victory two months ago.
“Everything I hear sounds very good. I am waiting for the other shoe to fall, but this is not how it was in 2018,” said Chris Huttman, a veteran agent in the state who has been following the first numbers of votes closely.
Democrats missed two decisive rounds in 2018 after more of their voters did not attend. But this election took place in December and did not include the high profile bets from these two Senate contests, creating entirely different participation scenarios. Huttman warned that while the vote has so far looked good for Democrats, election day remains largely unknown.
“I can say that the bright side of the moon looks good and I don’t know what the dark side of the moon will look like,” said Huttman. “I know that in 2018, I was like, ‘clear side doesn’t look good’”.
Huttman said his analysis showed that Democrats were on track to win about 80% of the initial votes they received in November, while Republicans were on their way to just two-thirds of the initial votes.
In Democratic-controlled electoral districts, the percentage of electoral votes that voted early is higher than in Republican-controlled electoral districts, according to electoral data analyzed by GeorgiaVotes.com, which tracked the initial voting counts during the second round. Republicans are aware of this deficiency, but are counting on their participation operation to get these voters to the polls next Tuesday.
A Republican operative working in the second round, who asked to remain anonymous to speak frankly, said the Republican Party’s problem with early voting was not a massive increase among Democrats, but a backwardness in their own areas. With early voting taking place over the holidays, including the two days the venues were closed last week, Republicans expect more of their voters to be simply planning to vote on Election Day.
“I feel really good about what we did there,” said the agent about the solo game. “We always knew that Georgia would be close. We know where our deficiencies are. We know what we have to do. “
Democrats prioritized early and absent voting to a higher degree than Republicans, and an advantage at this point was expected. Democrats see it as a firewall against the Republican Party’s performance next week. But the greater participation of the black vote, in addition to the addition of tens of thousands of new voters who did not vote in November, are positive indicators.
Although Biden narrowly won the state, Perdue surpassed Ossoff by almost 100,000 votes, and Republicans won more general votes than Democrats in the special election for the other seat in the Senate. To succeed in the second round, Democrats needed a more favorable electorate and believe there is evidence that this could materialize.
Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, said the vote so far among the main Democratic constituencies has been a “very good sign” for the party, although he warned against over-interpreting the initial vote to try to predict the outcome of the second round.
“We know that they will win election day, but will they have enough to erase that advantage?” Bonier said of the Republicans. “It seems quite clear that they will need to win election day by a larger margin than in November.”
Perdue and Loeffler on the trail during the election encouraged their base to vote earlier and continue to do so this week to close the gap. So far, the weather forecasts for Tuesday are sunny and pleasant. But that didn’t stop the warnings about waiting.
“You never know what the weather will be like next week. We only have Tuesday next week,” Perdue said on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s radio program on Monday. “You have to go out and vote before Thursday. We’re just saying to everyone in the state, you can’t risk not voting.”